| Bloody Island Massacre | |
|---|---|
| Location | Clear Lake, Lake County, California |
| Coordinates | 39°08′56″N 122°53′17″W / 39.149°N 122.888°W |
| Date | May 15, 1850 |
| Target | Pomo under Chief Augustine |
| Deaths | 60–800 Pomo Native American old men, women and children.[1] |
| Perpetrators | Elements of 1st Dragoons Regiment of the U.S. Army, under the command of Lieutenants Nathaniel Lyon and John Wynn Davidson |
| Motive | Revenge for the deaths of slave owners Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, who were killed in a slave rebellion |
| Reference no. | 427 |
The Bloody Island Massacre was a mass killing of indigenous Californians by the U.S. Military that occurred on what was then an island in Clear Lake, California, on May 15, 1850. It is part of the wider California genocide.
A number of the Pomo, an indigenous people of California, had been enslaved by two settlers, Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, and confined to one village, where they were starved and abused until they rebelled and murdered their captors. In response, the U.S. Cavalry killed at least 60 of the local Pomo. In July 1850, a report by Major Edwin Allen Sherman contended that “There were not less than four hundred warriors killed and drowned at Clear Lake and as many more of squaws and children who plunged into the lake and drowned, through fear, committing suicide. So in all, about eight hundred Native Americans found a watery grave in Clear Lake.” [2]